House of Trembling Leaves, The

by Lees, Julian

  Splitting up into pairs they reached the crest of the dam and knelt against the upper tier of logs. With hand axes they hacked half-moons into the wood and inserted the red sticks of dynamite. As they worked, wiping the sweat out of their eyes, a hornbill heckled and squawked from the coconut groves further up the river. They placed the explosives at nine strategic points, inserted the detonating caps and lit the thirty-minute fuses. The small flames sparkled in the grey dusk.

  Seconds later, like ghosts in the night, their silhouettes vanished into the rainforest.

  The tree house took on an amber hue from the sunset.

  Their torsos were ringed with sweat. As she lay on her back, sliding against the dry weave of rattan flooring, prickling her bare bottom, he worked his way down her body. He kissed her throat and the tips of her breasts. She felt his lips skate along her navel, felt the softness of his mouth edge lower, flicking the flesh rhythmically until his breath warmed the spot between her thighs. She threw her head back and stared at the sky. The clouds seemed to wobble and crumble.

  She pulled at his hair, thirsting for him to enter her. Please, she mouthed, breathing fast, now …

  She crushed herself against him, arching her hips. A ripple of pressure raced through her just as he raised her knees to her chest and slid into her.

  The world shrank in that instant.

  Legs entwined, they rocked in unison.

  The maidservant edged her way up the hillside to get a panoramic shot of the river, stepping through grass so high it tickled her fingertips as she walked. The land around her was lush and green and full of bugs. She spotted an old tree trunk and decided to use it as a resting place. It was hot work. The perspiration made her dark hair shine. With arms cocked like chicken wings, she adjusted the rangefinder and saw the ornate boats in the near distance, snaking along the river like a varicose vein.

  She took a couple of snaps before turning abruptly. Someone was walking through the forest behind her. She heard a tree branch snap, followed by a series of low whistles. Twenty feet away, a man emerged from the thicket. He was dressed all in grey and had a mole on his left cheek. One of his shoulders was lower than the other. Instinctively, she took a photograph of him. Through the frame she noticed he carried a red tin in his hand. He extracted whatever was within the tin and tossed the container into the brush; she made a note to retrieve it later.

  She shifted, rustling dry grass. Her eyes met his eyes, black and gleaming. His lips curled into a sneer.

  When she saw the gun in his hand she began to run.

  There was a low boom, followed by the screech of birds and the barking of every dog in the village. The ground shook, startling the leaves from the trees. At the dam face, water began to spray out from tiny chinks appearing all along the log wall, bursting through the gaps like needles of light through black Peranakan lace.

  The timber dam began to tremble. It began to groan. And then with a deafening CRACK it gave way.

  The torrent gushed forth, tossing logs about as if they were toothpicks. Like a ravenous sea monster, it came barrelling onto the banks, flattening all that stood in its path. It consumed a drove of bullocks in a giant cloud of spray. It smashed against a lone fisherman, devouring him in one like Leviathan swallowing Jonah. It gobbled up a small house and carried away its contents, including a child who was still inside. It obliterated everything in its path, growing higher and higher with each passing second and it was heading towards the main village.

  She reclined on her front, his face resting on the small of her back.

  It was a beautiful and clear evening. The mosquitoes stayed in the tall grass and the low sun hung in the sky like a copper penny. She could hear the laughter and sigh of the festival crowd not far away. Through the canopy she saw the lines of rubber trees reaching out for miles beyond. ‘‘I remember when my father first took me down to the plantation,’’ she said in a wistful tone. ‘‘I must have been five or six. We made a cutting in the bark of a tree and teased a dribble of milky sap into a bowl. I used to do lots of things with Ah Ba.’’

  ‘‘But not any more.’’

  ‘‘Not any more. The business has taken over his life.’’

  She draped her head over the edge of the tree house to listen to the sounds of the forest and to allow the breeze from a distant sea to tingle her skin. She heard a swish of leaves. At that instant she thought she saw a human figure at the fringe of her vision – a faceless man looming momentarily out of the elephant grass. A knot in her stomach tightened. Her eyes scanned the forest floor. She tensed. Was that a silhouette plunging into the darkness? She couldn’t be sure. There was a snap of twigs and a quick, sharp whistling, a call to someone, followed immediately by a whistled reply.

  She sat up straight and reached for her clothes. She wanted to flee.

  ‘‘What’s wrong?’’ he asked.

  ‘‘I want to go.’’

  ‘‘You’re trembling.’’

  ‘‘Someone may have seen us.’’

  They dressed and climbed down from the tree house. A chill went through her bones. And that’s when she heard it – a rumbling, crashing noise, like rocks shifting under the weight of a hundred waterfalls. There was no way of knowing what it was but the vibrations could be felt through the soles of her feet. At first she guessed it was an earthquake or a thunderclap; then she thought of cannon fire. Running was the only way she knew to ward off the fear.

  She ran downhill towards the village, tearing through the tall weeds and lalang thickets, towards the growing mass of sound. Her cotton shoes squelched with every step. She couldn’t understand why there was water rising up above her ankles. Each stride she took the water got deeper. The cold crept higher up her legs and then to her bewilderment she found dozens of silver-scaled fish sprawled out on their sides, gasping in the marshy shallows.

  She rushed through the elephant grass and stopped dead at the perimeter of the village square. The river was overflowing, unloading cargoes of mud. Everything was swamped. Staring in disbelief, trying to catch her breath, she watched the torrent sweep past her at a ferocious speed, carrying flotsam and stubble, bullock carcasses and uprooted trees. Choking, goggle-eyed people clung to walls and windowsills and knolls with the current tearing at them; hands ripped fistfuls of grass from the earth before vanishing. Someone was screaming to get the children to higher ground. A woman searching for her baby bawled with frenzied panic.

  She thought of the schoolgirls with the hibiscus flowers in their hair, wondered if they’d been drowned. A tree came crashing down to her left, throwing clouds of spray into her eyes just as a young boy’s face, her cousin’s she was sure, appeared abruptly out of the water and disappeared just as suddenly. ‘‘I’m going to die too,’’ she told herself.

  Confusion was everywhere; she heard a desperate shout and watched as the Association headman, with his body pinned to a tall pine, raise his voice in terror. An upturned bullock, hocks stiff as glass and breaking the water surface, speared towards him. With a sickening thud the half-ton animal slammed into the headman, ripping his neck from his shoulders. A handkerchief of blood fluttered the air. The water turned fleetingly from black to red.

  A moment later the Anglican Church began to shake. Slate tiles fell from its roof, lashing the water like mortar shells. She saw her Second-aunty Doris hobble in her direction, she was shouting at her, telling her to run for it. The church organ twisted and crumpled as the torrent swept it away. And then the entire structure collapsed.

  Part One

  January 1936

  1

  ‘‘Aiyoo, you know she’s gone completely cuckoo-clocks, don’t you?’’ Sum Sum said to a passing bird as it landed quietly on the boat’s gunwale. ‘‘Ever since she tripped over on lawn and struck her head on a stone she spending hours writing letters to herself, growing out her armpit hairs and speaking fancy-fancy English to imaginary sausage rolls. And now she’s running away from home to marry Big Ben.’’

  ‘‘I
can hear you,’’ said Lu See wrinkling her nose.

  ‘‘Oh good,’’ Sum Sum replied. ‘‘I thought you fallen asleep standing up, lah.’’

  ‘‘Will you please be quiet? I want to enjoy the sunset.’’

  Emerging from deep shadow, the low-slung tongkang followed a flock of bulbuls as they took to the air. On its teak deck, Lu See sipped water from a coconut husk and gazed into the tropical forest, at the filigrees of late afternoon sunlight filtering through the mist. The tongue of land wrinkled and folded before her eyes as the river mist rolled in, damp and thick. Lu See bounced the coconut husk in her hand a few times and then flipped it overboard; her eyes followed the bulbuls.

  ‘‘My God, I’ve done it,’’ she said to herself quietly. For days a heavy thread of anxiety had sewn itself into her chest, ravelled and intertwined like the Iban sleeping mats of Sarawak. But now, slowly, the stitches were coming undone. As they drifted further and further away from her family’s rural retreat in Juru, Lu See felt the unease subside and in its place a sense of hope and excitement emerged. She was still frightened, terrified even, that her father or Uncle Big Jowl would snatch her away, but now she had made the first step she felt her spirits leap. Her future was now in the hands of the Gods.

  Earlier in the day, just before dawn, Lu See and Sum Sum snuck away from Tamarind Hill via the servants’ quarters. Using a wheelbarrow to transport Lu See’s trunk, they carefully and quietly made their way across the back lawn. At first Lu See could not see the garden from the trees as it was so black, but when her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she half turned her head and made out the row of massive tamarinds lining the drive. That way she whispered, finding it hard to breathe, sensing her nerves getting the better of her.

  Sum Sum shuffled up beside her and they exchanged uneasy glances. Together they pushed the wheelbarrow along the dirt road. When the moon appeared from behind some clouds, they knew they would be visible against the surrounding forest so they increased their pace. Gradually, Lu See lost track of time; her world was restricted to the audible crunch of the wheelbarrow against the road, the ache in her hands and arms against the handlebars, the suffocating fear of being caught. She was so absorbed that when they reached the river’s edge she did not hear Sum Sum speaking to her. ‘‘We take small row boat now and catch tongkang later on. Maybe one mile away. I arrange everything already.’’ She watched her maidservant squat low to plunge a hand into the Juru’s current and pull at a thick rope. Lu See was aware of the silence all about her – it was as if the night animals had stopped what they were doing to watch them.

  The moonlight shone on the smooth black water. Sum Sum climbed aboard the small rowing boat and, by touch, shipped the oars. Lu See loaded the trunk into the stern and then stepped into the little vessel, trying to hold the craft steady with one hand. The boat was light and shallow-bottomed; it wobbled side-to-side under her weight so she sat down quickly.

  ‘‘You ready, meh?’’ asked Sum Sum.

  Lu See nodded. She looked behind her, wondering if they’d left muddied footprints in the ground.

  Sum Sum untied the rope from its moorings and pushed them away from the earthen bank. Lu See felt droplets of water on her forearms as the little craft, unstable now it was laden, bobbed downriver. In the distance, up on the hill, she made out her home at the top of the drive – granules of light sparked on, indicating that the other servants were now awake. A rooster began to crow as they melted into the darkness. It would only be a matter of time before the household sent out a search party.

  The trauma caused by the dam burst scarred the entire village. For weeks sobs of despair filled the night like fireflies released from a jar and one could not walk into the village square without embers from holy paper fanned by the temple monks catching in your hair.

  Half a year had passed since the disaster. It had taken months to repair the damage and almost as long to recover the dead; for weeks decaying bodies, all bloated and white, were fished out of the river miles downstream, most of them unidentifiable. The official death toll was put at 32, but Lu See was sure that the number was more like twice that. And of course the feuding between the two clans intensified – each blaming the other for sabotaging the dam. She also remembered Sum Sum talking about seeing a man with a gun on the day of the tragedy. Who was this man? Why did he point the weapon at her? Nobody seemed to know.

  Lu See and her family attended every funeral – Muslim, Christian and Taoist. Some affected Lu See more than others. The dead baby, tightly swaddled in a white shawl, haunted her, as did the sight of Mr See, the grandfather who owned the pith wood store, with his wispy Chinese beard, so long it had to be tucked into his waistband. And at each one the grief was visible wherever she looked. Women clasped and unclasped their hands, swaying their bodies and shaking their heads. Men slouched over and stared at the floor, round-mouthed with despair.

  But it was her cousin Tak Ming’s burial that cut her up the most. Tak Ming was Second-aunty Doris’ only son. He was twenty. Lu See’s brothers, James and Peter, had been particularly close to him.

  When they lowered his coffin, Lu See let out a whimper like a strangled animal. Even Lu See’s father, who had taken off his hat and placed it over his heart, was bawling.

  Only Uncle Big Jowl stood without tears in his eyes.

  Later, she found her father, Ah Ba, in their garden. He was kneeling, resting his head on the root of a fig tree and when he saw Lu See he hugged her so hard it hurt her ribs. He reached into his pocket and took out his wallet. He opened it to reveal a photograph of a five-year-old Lu See and her two brothers sitting at the steps of the gazebo, a bowl of lychees beside them. Lu See wiped her hand on her skirt before taking the photograph, realizing without having to be told how important it was to him. ‘‘I look at this picture every morning after I wake up,’’ he said. She studied the small movements of his face. ‘‘I cannot imagine what I would do if anything happened to you. If it was my daughter I had to put in the ground rather than Tak Ming.’’

  It was then that she’d decided to build a new pipe organ in her cousin’s memory.

  She tried not to think about this now.

  She also tried not to think about what they’d be saying about her back home, but the thoughts came nonetheless. Like a bullhorn blast, she heard her mother’s blaming tones – how can such a girl, so pretty with such shapely-shapely mouth and bright complexion do such a thing! So much going for her, you know. Clever student, good with numbers. Cha! And athletic, aiyoo, so athletic, played field hockey for the English-stream Bing Hua Upper Sixth, to boots.

  Enough, Lu See said to herself. She shook off her mother’s voice with a twitch of the head. I’m free now. I’m Teoh Lu See, I’m nineteen and I’m off to start a new life. I may be suffering from a god-awful head cold, but I’m feeling great! Oh God, I’m really doing this, aren’t I … I’m actually eloping.

  She took a deep breath. She had never slept outside her parents’ house.

  Eloping. To Lu See it was a deliciously secret word, rich in taboo and mystery and adventure. The idea of running away both thrilled and terrified her, as did the thought of the huge passenger liner she was going to board in Penang and the trip across the oceans. But at least on ship, nobody would pass judgement, nobody would chastise. There would be no marriage to the One-eyed Giant, no more tongue-lashings about seeing that ‘dreaded Woo boy’. On ship she would be free.

  Eloping. Elope. From the Middle Dutch ontlopen, to scurry away. From the Anglo-Norman French aloper: to run off with one’s lover; possibly related to the word to leap. She had looked it up in her father’s dictionary. In her mind, however, she wasn’t simply eloping – she was pursuing a dream; inspired by Adrian she was going to apply for a place at Cambridge. Truth was she was more excited by the prospect of studying at Girton College than marrying Adrian Woo.

  Lu See closed her eyes and felt the last dabs of evening sunshine warm her face.

  A few steps behind her stood Sum
Sum, her best friend, confidante and maidservant of seven years. Her black cloth shoes shuffled beside a shining eel skin trunk. Sum Sum was Darjeeling tea in colour with a moon face and stringy hair that she wore tied into a bun. Whilst Lu See was willowy legged, Sum Sum was pleasantly round. She had a compact hour-glass figure and held her back imperiously straight, clutching a small red onion which she held, arm extended, towards Lu See.

  ‘‘For your cold,’’ she said.

  Lu See shot Sum Sum a hurried look. ‘‘Are you serious? You expect me to chew on a raw onion?’’ As she spoke she could feel something trickle from a nostril. She blew hard into a handkerchief.

  ‘‘For sure, lah. My mother was tip-top Tibetan medicine woman, lah. She gave me onion all the time.’’

  The tongkang drifted on towards Butterworth. The flag of the Malay Federation billowed in the wind – horizontal stripes of white, red, yellow and black with a prancing tiger at its centre. One of the crew, a Malaccan in a short sarong, with arms bitten black from the sun, moved cautiously to the poop, kneeling. He unfurled a thick rope with a slab of rotting mutton attached to a fist-sized hook. With one end secured to a capstan, he tossed the rope astern. The crewmen were trawling for crocodiles, hoping to sell their flesh for medicinal broths and their skins for leather. Palm fronds flowed past. A breath of wind shifted a fringe of scrub by the riverbed, exposing the nostrils and shimmering, wet marble eyes of a partially submerged beast.

  ‘‘An onion?’’ Lu See repeated belligerently.

  ‘‘Ayo Sami, don’t argue, lah, I’m older than you.’’

  ‘‘By eleven bloody days!’’

  Sum Sum held the onion at arm’s length. ‘‘Well? You going to eat or not? Come, before I get damn powerful angry.’’

  Lu See made a face, as if something sharp and vinegary had crawled into her mouth. She took a bite and almost at once her eyes began to tear. She felt the spasm of a sneeze building, jellyfish tentacles tickling her sinuses, and held her breath for several moments to allow the sensation to pass.